Heroes and heartbreak: 36 hours of hell during Helene's historic floods

HOT SPRINGS, N.C. – Connor Goss stared in awe at the disaster unfurling 20 feet beneath him.

Roiling muddy water angrily stampeded down streets, invaded homes and pounded businesses. A dumpster floated by. Followed by couches and a sofa chair. Then propane tanks.

Floodwaters, unleashed by Hurricane Helene, rammed businesses on nearby Bridge Street, throwing up large, muddy waves. Directly under him inside the Iron Horse Station inn, water coursed through the hotel’s first-floor restaurant, knocking over chairs and creeping up the stairs to where he and four other people – two adults and two children, ages 2 and 4 – awaited help.

Goss, 26, was amazed at how fast it had all happened. Earlier that morning, Friday, Sept. 27, he had walked down to nearby Spring Creek. The water was rising but still within its banks. Just an hour later, it crept across the road and into the parking lot next to the inn. It slithered into the hotel he managed with the finesse of a thief, a trickle at first, then a stream, then a rush.

Across Andrews Avenue, now a raging river, Goss could see an inflatable rescue raft trying to get to the hotel. The raft was tethered by a rope to the claw of a bulldozer. The rescuers tried to get to the hotel but were dragged along the river by the rope. Firefighters pulled them back to the embankment. They tried a second time – dragged again, pulled back again.

Even if the raft made it, climbing out of a second-story window with a river thrashing below didn’t appeal to him.

Goss felt the first tendrils of panic creeping up his throat. “I am freaking out,” he thought.

Down below, rescuers studied the water and plotted their next move.

Steep canyons and record rain

The floods across the Southeast triggered by Hurricane Helene made the storm one of the deadliest natural disasters on the U.S. mainland in nearly two decades. As of Tuesday, at least 227 storm-related deaths were attributed to Helene, with North Carolina absorbing the lion share at 99 fatalities. Forty-nine people died in South Carolina, 33 in Georgia, 27 in Florida, 17 in Tennessee and two in Virginia.

Floods and landslides trapped residents in buildings and swept away large swaths of towns. More than 50 patients and staff were airlifted off the roof of Unicoi County Hospital in east Tennessee after it was engulfed by rising water at the height of the storm. Nearby, a group of seven workers at a plastics plant in Erwin, Tennessee, scrambled atop of a semi-truck to escape the floods and were swept away by the current. At least two of the workers died.

Western North Carolina, however, received the brunt of the damage. Its topography of soaring, forested mountains, steep canyons, valleys and rivers created a funnel effect that blasted floodwaters into unsuspecting towns and cities, said Corey Davis, North Carolina’s assistant climatologist.

Spruce Pine, a town about an hour northeast of Asheville, measured more than 24 inches of rain over the three-day event. Nearby Busick got 31 inches. All that water came gushing down mountainsides in swollen rivers or landslides.

The French Broad River is one of a few dozen rivers in the U.S. that flow north, from its headwaters near Rosman, North Carolina, through the Appalachian range and into Tennessee. It draws visitors from around the world to its Class III rapids and mountain scenery.

But during the floods it swelled with unthinkable amounts of rainfall, overflowed its banks and violently ripped through communities.

“You really had nothing to compare it against,” Davis said.

Climate change probably also played a role. Rains fell heavily and relentlessly, surpassing historic highs. In both the South and the Appalachian region, the rainfall was about 10% heavier and rainfall totals were 40% to 70% more likely because of climate change, according to a report by the World Weather Attribution Group, which studies extreme weather events.

The result was a catastrophic barrage of floods, landslides and swirling water that swept away families and entombed others in their cars and homes. Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, has reported 42 storm-related deaths.

Downriver, in Madison County, towns like Marshall, Mars Hill and Hot Springs received voluminous amounts of water and debris from its upstream neighbor. More remote, they had to fend for themselves until outside help arrived.

They were among many remote places in the North Carolina mountains where the staggering difficulty of reaching and rescuing residents ? much less restoring power and water and rebuilding homes ? would begin to unfold only in the coming days.

As floodwaters devoured roads and mauled landscapes, state and federal officials could only watch from their bunkered command posts, unable to reach many rural communities.

Locals were on their own.

Thursday, Sept. 26

As Hurricane Helene formed and strengthened in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Mitch Hampton, 54, paid close attention.

A longtime river guide and co-owner of French Broad Adventures, which ferries tourists along the French Broad River’s rapids, Hampton instinctively followed weather events to predict cancellations at his company. And as deputy chief of the Walnut Community Volunteer Fire Department, about 26 miles north of Asheville, he also tried to decipher whether a system posed a threat to his community.

His department had the only raft rescue and recovery team in Madison County, a rural stretch of mountain and river towns with a population of 21,000. A few times a year, Hampton paddled his inflatable raft along the French Broad, searching for the body of a fisherman who had fallen out of his boat or a capsized kayaker.

More often, he answered calls for car crashes or heart attacks.

Usually, Gulf storms posed little threat to the mountain communities of Western North Carolina. But Helene looked different, Hampton thought. Checking his weather apps, he tracked the storm’s size and intensity – and how it was beelining right for them.

On Thursday, Sept. 26, Hampton rechecked his equipment ? rafts, water rescue vests, helmets, flip line ? then he and other firefighters visited low-lying areas near the French Broad, advising residents of the coming storm.

Mostly, he thought, they were ready.

“If the water gets up to the railroad tracks, we can handle that,” he said. “But when it gets over it, you don't know. You don’t even know what you're going to do.”

As Helene menaced and marched toward the coast, the National Weather Service office in Greer, South Carolina, which forecasts for western North Carolina, was sending out increasingly alarming alerts. The previous few days, a cold front had stalled over the region and dropped several inches of rain onto the Appalachians. The already saturated mountainsides and swollen rivers were about to get another dosing from Helene.

In a webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 24, meteorologist Clay Chaney warned officials of “worst-case scenarios.” The next day, he dispatched an alert: “*URGENT MESSAGE* This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era,” comparing the coming floods to those of 1916, a deluge that overran towns and killed at least 80 people in Buncombe County.

As Helene’s outer bands raked the Appalachian range, the French Broad River began to swell. At 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, the river at Asheville was at an elevation of 2.31 feet and flowing at a normal 2,130 cubic feet per second. Just 24 hours later, it had jumped to 10 feet and 23,400 cubic feet per second.

And climbing.

Sheltering at the Iron Horse

In Hot Springs, a river town of 520 residents at the confluence of Spring Creek and the French Broad, Connor Goss busied himself with canceling reservations at the Iron Horse Station and processing refunds. With the storm approaching, the hotel closed for business.

Visitors have converged on Hot Springs, 35 miles north of Asheville, since the 1800s to soak in the natural thermal springs and marvel at the soaring Blue Ridge Mountains. Today, river guides take visitors over the Class III rapids on the nearby French Broad, and eclectic shops, such as the Artisun Gallery and Café and Big Pillow Brewery, line its main commercial drag, Bridge Street. As a stop on the Appalachian Trail, hikers use Hot Springs to grab a hot meal or share a beer at Spring Creek Tavern.

“Mayberry meets the Twilight Zone,” said Amanda Arnett, 49, co-owner of the Spring Creek Tavern, describing Hot Springs. “Everyone is just a little bit kooky.”

Goss came to Hot Springs for a singular reason: stability. After bouncing around cities ? Myrtle Beach, Louisville, Austin ? with his family in his youth and dropping in and out of four colleges, he was yearning for a place to settle and get to know his neighbors. Hot Springs delivered.

Goss had been visiting Hot Springs since he was a teenager and knew it well. Six years earlier, his parents, Karen Howard-Goss and Gary Goss, had bought the Iron Horse Station, a historic hotel on Bridge Street with high ceilings, wood floors and 15 rooms situated over a restaurant and tavern on the ground floor. Goss moved to Hot Springs to work as the hotel’s innkeeper, taking in the town’s clean air and natural beauty, while his parents lived a few miles outside town in a tiny home perched on a hill.

When he first arrived, Goss hiked each day up to Lover’s Leap, a rocky outcropping with panoramic views of the mountains. But he mostly enjoyed staying put.

“It gave me stability after not having stability for so long,” Goss said, “which is something I really needed.”

On the Thursday before the floods, after canceling reservations, Goss strolled through town and was mildly surprised to see residents stacking sandbags in front of doorways. Later that day, Jordan Mundell, the hotel’s kitchen manager, moved into the Iron Horse with his wife, Hailie, 4-year-old son, Levi, and 2-year-old daughter, River. The family lived on River Road along the French Broad, which tended to flood. As the threat of floods loomed, they moved into two adjoining rooms at the Iron Horse, just to be safe.

A hiker making her way along the Appalachian Trail, a 67-year-old woman who identified herself as Dede, heard about the incoming storm and also checked into the Iron Horse.

That night, Mundell made everyone chicken alfredo and drank a few beers. At his dad’s urging, Goss moved his car to higher ground. His dad asked him again whether he would like to come spend the night in their home.

Goss declined.

“I think I’m good here,” he told his dad. “What’s a couple of inches on the street going to do?”

‘Prayer warrior’

On Thursday, Sept. 26, the large training room at the Madison County Sheriff’s Office ? the county’s de facto emergency command center ? hummed with activity. Deputies hustled in and out. Emergency management officials peered at laptops, following the latest weather reports and Helene’s track.

Coy Phillips, the office’s chief deputy, glanced at the storm’s path, then drove around the county, checking on elderly residents or ferrying water and food to the shelter set up at the local high school.

Phillips, 40, grew up nearby. He knew the county well. He had seen the weather alerts and the ALL CAPS flash flood warnings. He knew the low areas, like Marshall, were in for a rough night.

Phillips was concerned for his two daughters, ages 12 and 17, and his fiancée, who would be riding out the storm alone in their home as he worked through the night. He also thought of his older sister, Michelle Quintero, 49, who also worked at the sheriff’s office as director of its jail.

Growing up, Quintero was like a mother to Phillips, protective and nurturing. And when he gained custody of his two daughters as a single dad, she became a mother to them, too, organizing birthday parties and attending graduations. Phillips admired his sister’s grit, her charm, her ability to light up a room with a smile. But mostly he admired her knack for praying for them through the toughest situations.

“Prayer warrior,” he called her. “She could pray a blue sky through a cloudy day.”

On that Thursday, Phillips worked through the night, checking on the shelter and answering calls for residents still hoping to evacuate. He drove to Hot Springs, knowing it was one of the lower-lying spots in the county.

A light rain fell but, in the predawn darkness, Spring Creek appeared serene, the town quiet. Phillips headed back to the command post.

Then the wind began to howl.

Friday, Sept. 27

The din from the Unication emergency pager jolted Mitch Hampton awake at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27.

Korey, his wife and partner in both the river guide business and fire department, sprang awake next to him. He called the station: The rivers were overflowing and a person needed rescue from a home in Marshall. Mitch and Korey pulled on their gear and drove off in their truck with the raft fastened to the roof.

As they neared, they saw water pushing its way onto Marshall’s streets, creeping up the side of cars and swallowing fences. They set out in the raft and paddled to the house on Island Road. The wind whipped across the water and trees snapped around them. With water rising quickly around the home, five people now needed evacuation. They called in an extra raft to get everyone out safely.

The water continued rising, at rates Hampton had never seen in his three decades on the French Broad. He turned to his wife.

“This is not going to be it,” he told her, referring to the first rescue of the day.

His radio crackled with another request: A body ? one of western North Carolina’s first fatalities ? needed to be recovered from Gabriel Creek in nearby Mars Hill. By the time they arrived, the weather had worsened. The wind roared and rain pelted them sideways. Trees cracked and fell around them.

The body was caught in a tangle of branches and debris ? a situation known as a “strainer” in river rescue parlance ? in the dangerously swollen creek. Hampton clicked a rope to his life vest and waded into the rushing water, downriver from the body in case it loosened from the debris.

As he got into the creek, he stepped on a tangle of submerged barbed wire and had to free his leg. He retrieved the body and pulled it ashore, handing it over to a waiting ambulance.

His Motorola two-way radio buzzed again: A family in Mars Hill had fled to the roof of their home, which was now floating downriver. Mitch, Korey and his brother, Jim, who had joined the effort, packed up their gear and drove off.

‘My wife and kids … are in that building!’

Goss woke up with a phone call from his father at around 7 a.m., asking him to check nearby Spring Creek and send him photos. He dressed and headed outside. Bystanders gathered and gawked as the creek steadily swelled, while tree trunks, branches and other debris piled up under one of the creek’s bridges. He texted photos to his dad.

By the time he returned to the Iron Horse, the parking lot next door was flooding, the water level already reaching the floorboards of Mundell's Ford F-150. He raced upstairs and banged on Mundell's door.

“Your cars are under water!” he told Mundell.

Mundell threw on shorts and a T-shirt and ran downstairs to move the truck. Water was taking over the parking lot and starting to flow down Andrews Avenue, where a second entrance to the Iron Horse was located. He moved his truck and his wife’s SUV to higher ground. But when he returned, water was pushing up against the Iron Horse’s Andrews Avenue door.

From inside, Goss tried to push the door open, but a gush of water poured in. He pulled it closed.

“Go around!” he yelled at Mundell.

Mundell sloshed through waist-high water and peeked around the corner to Bridge Street. It was already a raging river. Waves crashed against businesses. White smoke whistled from propane tanks. The inn’s door would be impossible to open, he thought. He retreated to the railroad tracks on higher ground, where residents and first responders gathered.

In front of the Iron Horse, Andrews Avenue was now a flowing river hurling branches, tree trunks, a refrigerator, a dumpster. A sickening realization dawned on Mundell: He was stuck outside while his family was inside. And the water kept coming.

“My wife and kids and two other people are up in that building!” he told a local firefighter standing by the tracks.

The firefighter called for help.

‘It just went absolutely insane’

Controlled chaos descended on the command post inside the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

Calls poured in from panicked residents. Downed trees blocked roads, trapping families. Whole neighborhoods engulfed by water. Deputies and firefighters scrambled to answer them.

Coy Phillips got in his truck and pushed through the rain and wind, helping firefighters clear trees off roads or ferry residents to shelter. His handheld radio constantly buzzed with new calls.

“The intensity of the wind started picking up,” Phillips recalled. “It just went absolutely insane.”

As Phillips drove, Quintero called him from her home in neighboring Yancey County, urging her little brother to stay safe. She was off that day but was heading to the Madison County jail to help any way she could.

Phillips told her to drive slowly; conditions were deteriorating fast. Quintero said she worried for their community.

“I just hope we all come out safe,” she told him.

Quintero said she was praying for everyone and told Phillips she loved him. They hung up.

Soon after, Quintero stepped out of her home on Upper Browns Creek Road in Yancey County – but floodwaters had already consumed the front yard. She went out through the backyard instead, trying to reach her car.

Quickly, floodwaters surrounded her. She retreated to a small hill and clung to a tree stump as the current churned around her. A neighbor, Chris Robinson, tried to throw her a rope. But a large wave pummeled her, spilling her into the water. Her legs became tangled with submerged fencing.

Robinson jumped in after her. He was trying to untangle her legs when a tree crashed upon both of them, pushing them underwater.

Robinson popped back up. Quintero stayed under.

Jagged piles of debris, an aborted rescue

Mitch Hampton arrived at the overflowing creek in Mars Hill, and he and his crew threw their raft in the water. Somewhere out in the deluge was a family who had scrambled up to their roof when the water invaded their home.

They were about to push off when the voice of his fire chief, Josh Lewis, came over the radio.

“Don’t launch,” Lewis said. A bridge had crumpled downstream, creating jagged piles of debris in the river. Hampton’s raft didn’t have a motor, and the current could propel them downstream into unseen hazards. It was too dangerous to go in, the chief advised.

Hampton and the others pulled their raft out of the water and discussed the rescue with their chief over the radio. They decided to abort the rescue and wait for the next call.

It was now past noon on Friday. Wind and rain were still whipping hard, and now cellphone service had ceased, making their map apps inoperable. They wandered through the debris-clogged roads the best they could, looking for landmarks.

A new call emerged: People were trapped at the Iron Horse Station in Hot Springs. They sped off.

‘Like a scene out of the Titanic’

Water relentlessly rushed into the downstairs restaurant of the Iron Horse. Goss watched as it started to slosh over his sneakers.

Across western North Carolina, homes and structures were collapsing after water invaded their lower extremities, snapping frames or pushing homes clean off foundations. In Asheville, a 39-year-old woman and her 7-year-old son, along with her parents, had escaped to their roof and were awaiting help when the floods ripped the home apart, washing away the son and the parents, both 73.

Just around the corner from the Iron Horse, the pounding floods tore off the southeast corner of the Spring Creek Tavern on Bridge Street, exposing the stairway inside. An outdoor deck disintegrated.

Though most of Hot Springs’ flooding was coming from Spring Creek, the nearby French Broad was swelling to historic, dangerous highs. The river that had started at a normal 3 feet in elevation and 1,790 cubic feet per second on Wednesday shot up to nearly 17 feet by noon Friday and flowed at 81,000 cubic feet per second.

In a few hours, it would climb to more than 20 feet and pulse at 101,000 cubic feet per second ? equal to the amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls in high season and 10 times stronger than the Class IV rapids in the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon, considered some of the most challenging in the U.S.

“It’s a stunning amount of water,” said Kevin Colburn of American Whitewater, a nonprofit that monitors rapids and rivers.

How long the Iron Horse could withstand the barrage coursing through it was anyone’s guess ? and one Goss preferred not to dwell on.

As water filled the restaurant, he and Hailie Mundell splashed to the kitchen and grabbed supplies to bring upstairs: a hotplate, hamburger patties, a container of mashed potatoes, dates.

“It was like a scene out of the Titanic,” Goss said. “We were just getting as much food as we could.”

Karen Howard-Goss, a few miles outside town, worried about her son.

“Connor be careful!!” she texted him. “I love you so much!”

“Thank you mom!” he replied. “I certainly will. Love you too!”

‘Eddy hopping’ and a rescue attempt

Just past 1 p.m., Hampton and his team arrived at the railroad tracks across from the Iron Horse.

Mundell, relieved at the site of the rescuers, pointed out the building and suggested walking upstream along the railroad tracks and launching from there. The clouds broke and the sun peeked through for the first time in two days, revealing an eerily calm sky as floodwaters roared beneath.

At a site just upstream from the inn, Hampton tied a rope to a railroad tie, ran it through a pulley attached to the claw of a bulldozer and clamped the other end to this raft. Firefighters on the embankment were instructed to pull them back once they had the evacuees. He rested a 24-foot ladder on the raft they would use to reach the second-story window.

Hampton, his wife, Korey, his brother, Jim, and another volunteer paddled into the fast-moving channel. But as soon as they did, the rope got snagged on debris and pulled the raft askew.

They tried it again. Again they were pulled away from the hotel.

Inside, the five residents gathered in Room 201 and opened the window, watching the rescuers trying to reach them.

Up to this point, Goss had remained calm. The thought of the building imploding hadn’t pestered him or crossed his mind much. But as he saw the ladder and the rescuers, his thoughts raced to stepping out of the window with the rushing water below. His heartbeat quickened.

“That really freaked me out,” he said.

Across the watery avenue, Hampton removed the rope from the raft and decided to just paddle to the building, untethered. It was a dicey decision. They would have to paddle the motorless raft to the inn, in water moving much faster than he had ever seen before.

If they got caught in the current, they could careen downriver toward Bridge Street, where the floods were tearing apart buildings. Men lined up along the embankment, gripping ropes, ready to throw them at the rescuers should the raft lose control.

To reach the inn, the crew would have to “eddy hop,” or look for small eddies in the current to which they could steer the raft and rest before moving to the next one.

They paddled hard. Steady. Catching an eddy. Paddling more. Steering. Finally reaching the building, one of the crew grabbed a conduit on the side and Hampton jumped out into the chest-high water and secured the boat with a rope to a locked door. He leaned the ladder against the wall.

‘Please don’t drop them!’

Korey climbed up, cradling five life vests. She climbed into Room 201 and instructed them to put on the vests and they would evacuate in alternating order: adult-child-adult-child-adult. Goss, visibly shaken, stepped forward.

“I'm just going to say it: I'm scared as all get out to go down that ladder,” he said.

Korey smiled. “I would be a little concerned if you weren't.”

Goss went first. Hampton climbed up and cradled River and slowly descended the ladder while holding her.

On the embankment, Mundell watched as Hampton balanced his child in his right arm while gripping the ladder with his left. His heart leaped into his throat.

“Please don’t drop them!” Mundell yelled over the din of the flood, tears breaking up his words. Then to River: “Please just be good! Let them take care of you!”

After what felt like an eternity to Mundell, Hampton placed River safely into the raft. Dede, the Appalachian Trail hiker, came next. Then Hampton carried Levi down and finally Hailie descended, followed by Korey.

The crew paddled furiously and reached the embankment. Mundell hugged each of his family members, then walked off to meet a friend who would drive them to Tennessee.

Goss texted his parents, told them he was OK and he, too, left for a friend’s house on higher ground.

Mitch reattached the raft to his truck. He didn’t have time to dry off. More calls were coming in over the radio.

More people needed help.

‘It’s Michelle’

Coy Phillips spent Friday morning helping residents evacuate and joining firefighters on calls. In the afternoon, he and his boss, Sheriff Buddy Harwood, drove around in Phillips' truck, surveying the damage. Marshall was getting the brunt of the storm.

Phillips hadn’t heard from his sister since they had spoken that morning, but he pushed down any dark thoughts that something may have happened to her. Staying busy helped.

Around late afternoon, Phillips and the sheriff drove to a bridge spanning across the French Broad just south of Marshall. Residents had gathered on it to survey the damage downstream. Some filmed the destruction on their smartphones.

Phillips and Harwood were ordering people off the bridge, warning it wasn’t safe, when their two-way radios crackled with the voice of Yancey County Sheriff Shane Hilliard, who wanted to meet them both at the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

Phillips instantly recognized the protocol: It was customary to call a deputy to the station when there had been a death in the family. The thought bloomed that something had happened to his sister but still wouldn’t fully compute in Phillips' mind.

Harwood voiced the dread rising in Phillips: “It’s Michelle.”

They drove the 3 miles to the sheriff’s station in silence.

Once there, Hilliard was out front waiting for them. He told Phillips they had recovered his sister’s body near her home.

If Hilliard offered any details of how Quintero died, Phillips doesn’t remember them. He wanted to know as little as possible about his sister’s death ? he knew only that she was one of the brightest lights in his universe and she was now, implausibly, gone.

“She was one of those strings that kept everything so tight,” he said.

Phillips went inside the station to break the news to Quintero’s daughter, Ashlynn Quintero, who also worked for the sheriff. The two sat on the curb outside, hugged and cried.

A tough decision

As dusk descended on Madison County, Mitch Hampton’s day was winding down. His radio called him to one last job: A man was clinging to a tree near Rollins Road in Marshall and needed rescue.

Hampton and his team rushed to the area. They knew exactly who the man was. They had been to the neighborhood earlier in the day and had overheard sheriff’s deputies urging Bruce Tipton, 75, to leave his trailer home about 50 feet from the French Broad River. He refused.

Tipton, a Navy veteran, had members of extended family living nearby. The night before, relatives evacuated his sister from Rollins Road, said Annie Meadows, Tipton’s niece. They offered to take him too, but he wanted to stay, she said.

As the floods increased Friday, his trailer, built on cinder blocks, imploded, pushing him down the river. He managed to cling to a tree, just out of sight of land. For several hours, he called out to family members. Hold on, they urged.

When Hampton and his crew showed up, they surveyed the scene, trying to determine where to put in and how to reach Tipton. Hampton climbed on a shed, then hopped on a neighbor’s roof to get a better look.

The tree Tipton clung to was about 75 feet off the embankment, with floodwaters rushing around it. Next to it was a telephone pole with loose wires and metal siding wrapped around it.

No eddies. Nowhere to pause the raft once they neared it. The problem wasn’t putting in ? it was how to slow and stop the raft once it got caught in the current, Hampton said. Further downstream was a dam clogged with cars, trees and other debris where they’d be hurtled if they couldn’t stop.

Hampton surveyed the scene, drawing on three decades of experience of paddling the French Broad to try to find a way to get to Tipton. None emerged. As family members yelled and urged them to save Tipton, he conferred with his team, finally arriving at probably the most difficult decision of a very difficult day: They couldn’t launch.

Hampton told family members they’d return at dawn to see if they could help him.

“There was no way to stop the momentum of our boat,” he said. “You need to maintain a position before you actually help someone.”

Tipton held on for several more hours, intermittently calling out for help, as family members looked on and pleaded with him to hold on. Then, at 10:51 p.m. ? a time seared into witnesses’ minds ? Tipton went limp and dropped headfirst into the floodwaters.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Meadows, Tipton’s niece, who saw him fall. “The trauma and the horror everyone has endured is going to be in the minds of people for a long time, if not forever.”

The incident was equally painful for Hampton.

“This was the one that bothers me the most,” he said. “In my heart, I knew I couldn't do it.”

That night, after debriefing with county officials and securing their gear at the station, Hampton and Korey returned home. He showered and crawled into bed with his dog, Maddie, a 15-year-old beagle-lab mix, and his wife. They held each other until they drifted off to sleep.

Saturday, Sept. 28

The day after the floods, residents of Hot Springs emerged from battered homes to an apocalyptic scene: buildings demolished, as if dynamite had been tossed inside; roads buckled or gone; mounds of debris crammed up against bridges and embankments; a corner of the Spring Creek Tavern gone. The Spring Creek Hotel lost two of its walls; a thick layer of mud covered everything.

The Iron Horse Station inn's first floor was hollowed out and layered in mud, but the building still stood.

Roughly 80% of businesses in Hot Springs were damaged to the point they couldn’t operate, said Daniel Myers, a Hot Springs alderman and volunteer firefighter. Across Madison County, four people died in the floods.

Residents and town officials gathered at Sara Jo’s Station, a gas station and mini mart further down on Bridge Street, on Saturday morning and concluded that help was probably several days away. They organized themselves into groups and decided which key businesses to clean out first – such as Gentry’s Hardware – that could help with the town’s recovery.

An outdoor kitchen behind the Hot Springs Rafting Company fired up and residents cooked meals with donated food. Locals emptied powerless coolers and contributed hot dogs, ribs and hamburgers. Eggs and country ham were served for breakfast.

Local residents then turned to the arduous task of cleaning out muddied, broken businesses. “You would work a little bit and then cry a little bit, work a little bit and cry a little bit,” said David Wagner, co-owner of the Spring Creek Hotel. “Everybody joined together.”

Connor Goss walked down Bridge Street in a daze. All the businesses that had so warmly welcomed him since arriving were splintered or destroyed. There were broken windows all over town, and thick mud oozed down the street.

“It looked like a war battle had taken place there,” he said.

Soon after, Goss evacuated to Ohio to visit his grandmother, then drove to Pennsylvania to spend time with his longtime girlfriend. He returned to Hot Springs to check on recovery but is not sure how long he’ll stay.

The place that so effortlessly gifted him stability was in historic upheaval.

“I have no idea what businesses are going to reopen or not,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

A purple casket and impromptu graveside service

Coy Phillips had mountains of debris to help sift through and people to help.

But first he faced a more pressing issue: burying his sister.

Lacking power, officials in neighboring Burnsville told him they couldn’t preserve the body of Michelle Quintero, so they needed to expedite the burial. Family members picked out a glittering purple casket ? the same color as her Jeep ? and a handful of relatives met at the local cemetery.

There was no funeral wake, no way for out-of-town family or friends to drive in for the service. A few locals found a front loader to dig the grave. They held a small graveside service. A handful of people attended. No one brought flowers.

In the days since, people have approached Phillips ? at the gas station or the grocery store ? in tears, offering condolences and telling him how much Quintero meant to them. One person, a former inmate and recovering addict, gave Phillips a hug while he pumped gas and said his sister had helped him while he was in jail and prayed for his recovery.

“She really touched a lot of people,” Phillips said.

Shortly after the floods, as Phillips searched for flashlight batteries on a shelf of his home, he discovered a book of daily affirmations Quintero had gifted him five years earlier.

Inside the front cover, she had scrawled: “To my sweet lil brother … Please read daily as you face Satan each and every day. In the workplace he is surely raging. But the Good News (is) there is an answer! The God we serve is sovereign and powerful …”

Phillips now carries it with him wherever he goes.

‘Water just has a special effect’

Mentally and physically exhausted, Mitch Hampton had scant time to rest. Two days after the floods, he and his team were back in the water ? this time looking for victims.

In coordination with the sheriff’s office and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations, Hampton was recruited to use his raft to scour the French Broad to find people who had been swept away in the floods. He paired up with Lisa Briggs, director of the Emergency and Disaster Management program at Western Carolina University and a regional leader in training cadaver dogs.

Eight hours a day, Hampton, Briggs and her dogs paddled downstream, picking through the river’s tributaries and storm detritus, as the cadaver dogs perched on the raft’s bow, following scents. Within a week, he and his team had recovered three of Madison County’s four victims.

Sometimes, the bodies were fastened to the boats and paddled to an opening in the shoreline. Other times, they needed to be carried out of dense stretches of wilderness.

Despite the pain and destruction wrought by the French Broad, despite the years of recovery ahead, Hampton said he still loves the river ? but with newfound respect.

“Being able to go down a river and read the features, and either you get it right or you get it wrong,” he said. “It's always completed me. Water just has a special effect.”

Hampton and his wife had planned a vacation in France in October, but they postponed the trip. Neighboring Yancey County, which had tallied 11 deaths, had requested their help to look for bodies there. Hampton and Korey geared up and began scouring those swollen creeks.

Across North Carolina, 41 families were still missing a loved one.

How To Help

The Iron Horse Station inn has a Venmo account to raise money for rebuilding. 

The Walnut Community Volunteer Fire Department set up a PayPal account for donations to replace equipment damaged in the search and rescue efforts. 

Jordan Mundell is also trying to raise money to relocate his family back to Hot Springs.  

To donate to the overall North Carolina hurricane recovery: www.nc.gov/donate.  

Follow Jervis and Kenning on X at: @MrRJervis, @chris_kenning.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Heroes and heartbreak: 36 hours of hell in Helene's historic floods